Tag Archives: objectification

The major criticisms of the fashion industry reveal deeply embedded, inherently wrong values placed on typically “perfect” stick-thin bodies – leading to the ultimate realization that guess what, no one can live up to those expectations. No one normal, anyway. I found this photo on Refinery29 and the title of the slideshow read Plus-Size Model Robyn Lawley Causes Major Bikini Envy. It’s sad, really. It’s sad that this beautiful woman can and will never be referred to as just a model. She will always be seen as a plus-sized version of a model.

Obviously this was inspired largely by the lovely Liz and Kimberly‘s post on gender, advertising and women’s objectification in the media. The fact of the matter is, if you’re looking in a magazine and its advertisements – high fashion or other – and the model doesn’t look absolutely stunning in whatever he or she is wearing, you’re probably not going to be convinced to buy it. It’s a subconscious flaw in human nature that’s probably been exposed to us since we were young. “Sex sells (yes everyone knows)…”, to quote Kimberly. Is it something psychological? Is it jealousy that makes us want to buy something just because someone beautiful and thin is holding it?

I thought that this lightly related back to Foucault and Deleuze’s conversation with power. Who controlled that power anyway? Who decided in the beginning of the fashion industry that thin would be beautiful? Why can’t Robyn Lawley be beautiful? The only way that we can all stop striving to be someone else is to realize it, that’s the first step.

On a brighter note, a few major fashion magazines have decided not to Photoshop excessively on models and celebrities. I’m not sure how much that’s been taken into effect. What are your thoughts?

Women’s objectification in the media becomes more and more predominant.

Reading Liz’s blog post made me think back to when I took a Gender Roles class a couple semesters ago where I had learned about Goffman as well. Then I started to think about how women are more often than not represented as objects and commodity in the media. Sex sells (yes everyone knows) but why is it that women are the only ones stripped down naked holding a can of soda, or a pair of shoes, or advertising a watch? In order to sell these objects women are displayed with little to the imagination. Women are often degraded and used to advertise objects and as Althusser might say “we are therefore interpellated as objects.” It is rather difficult to fight this due to capitalism and the consumer; people still continue to buy objects displayed on these absurd magazines. Therefore there is no need to change regardless of how demeaning many of these images seen on tv, magazines, even billboards, are to women.

– I thought the rather disturbing image above was perfect in showing how women are displayed as commodities.

Ever notice how men are usually portrayed as dominant, and women as submissive?

DISCLAIMER:

My thoughts here are so ADD-ish, sorry! Too much coffee!

Mitsue’s post on Jay-Z got me thinking about Erving Goffman‘s book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in which he analyzes social interaction as a sort of theatrical performance. Mitsue mentions that Jay-Z presents himself in different ways according to different situations, and I think this is a great example of dramaturgy. Jay-Z puts on different “acts” and in turn, the people he interacts with treat him according to the role he is playing, as Letterman is doing in the interview. You know what’s weird about the interview though? The way Jay-Z presents himself is incongruous with his social status. In the Letterman interview, Jay-Z goes between acting like an up-and-coming artist and a schoolboy, not like the successful entrepreneur with a net worth of over half a billion dollars. Strange.

Anyway, thinking about dramaturgy made me look up Goffman’s other work Gender Advertisementwhich led me to the picture above. I’ve been thinking about gender performance a lot lately. As pretty much anyone who follows American pop culture knows, super high heels/stilettos are super hot right now, especially the red-soled Louboutins. Stiletto heels are painful to wear, not good for your feet nor your back, and they make walking difficult. Think about that. They make walking difficult! It compromises balance and stability. So the question I’m asking myself is why do so many women wear them? One reason is to look sexy, right? We are bombarded with images that tell us how femininity is supposed to be performed, and how to be desirable to the hetero-male gaze. Ok, so we’re told to wear heels if we want to be desirable, and if we were to take Althusser’s view of ideology, this media bombardment of gender stuff would be under the charge of the Ideological State Apparatus. Here’s the crazy part: many feminists (myself included) see through the bullshit, yet it’s so hard to reject it. Why? I think desire has lot to do with it. Simply put, most people don’t want to be considered ugly and undesirable, so we continue to do whatever it takes to not be that. They (those who seek power over us) hold that over our heads! So how exactly is gender performance (esp. “femininity”), power, and desire interrelated? Why is it so difficult to shake off the demands of the ISA- constructed and approved heterosexual male gaze? I’m still thinking it through. Need more coffee. Any thoughts?